It is often difficult to determine the exact locations of a large number of items (assets) in a vast storage area. A number of technologies have been tried, but none of these technologies work particularly well.
For example, it has long been known to locate assets distributed throughout a wide area by the use of GPS technology. However, GPS technology does not work particularly well in indoor applications and is expensive to implement.
RFID technology has also been used. This technology involves attaching an RFID tag to each asset stored in an area. The RFID tag includes a memory that stores an ID which uniquely identifies the corresponding asset. A reader is used to read the ID on each of the RFID tags so as to identify and/or track the corresponding assets through the area. It has also been known to use multiple readers that implement triangulation in order to locate the RFID tags and, therefore, the corresponding assets.
One embodiment of the present invention is directed an alternative system that is useful to locate assets in a large area. A further embodiment of the present invention is directed to a method for placing the readers in the area so as to optimize the accuracy of asset location system.